Lesson 377 of 1570
How Agents Go Wrong
Agents fail in funny and scary ways — booking the wrong flight, sending wrong emails, running up bills..
Lesson map
What this lesson covers
Learning path
The main moves in order
- 1How Agents Go Wrong
- 2ambiguity
- 3overconfidence
- 4guardrails
Concept cluster
Terms to connect while reading
Section 1
How Agents Go Wrong
Agents fail in funny and scary ways — booking the wrong flight, sending wrong emails, running up bills.
Most failures come from misunderstanding the goal — agents are great at following directions, bad at noticing when they are heading off course.
Three common failure modes
- Misinterpreting ambiguous instructions
- Continuing too long without checking in
- Using the wrong tool for a task
Key terms in this lesson
The big idea: Agents fail in ways that are funny in retrospect — but only if you caught them in time.
End-of-lesson quiz
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